


Heart Is Off Time

by fratboyryan



Category: Buzzfeed Unsolved (Web Series)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Mob, Crimes & Criminals, Implied/Referenced Abuse, M/M, Psychological Horror, Supernatural Elements
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-01-01
Updated: 2019-01-01
Packaged: 2019-10-02 04:17:33
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,192
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17257427
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fratboyryan/pseuds/fratboyryan
Summary: Ryan's got his perfect boyfriend, who does whatever he wants. His boyfriend wants bolognese for dinner - Ryan gives it to him. Everything is good. Everything is fine. Everythingisfine. His boyfriend isn't a freak.





	Heart Is Off Time

**Author's Note:**

> So I read Ulysses and I still think about it every day. Joyce is a master and you ought to read it.
> 
> Anyway, this fic is more experimental and aims to be psychological horror. There's a blanket warning for violence and gore, but also some interactions can be read in a dub con light. I'm not tagging in the system because the aim is not to titillate, but if that triggers you I'd read this fic with caution. 
> 
> There are many things this fic is about, I hope you're able to pick up on it (and that I'm a skilled enough writer to leave clues). Maybe when I finish it I'll post something on tumblr about my aims when writing it. Let me know if you'd be interested in that.

The fire’s died out by now, only a few floor lamps illuminating the wide space. Ryan prefers soft lighting, warm yellows washing over the room. He likes mood lighting in bars, the half-light of nightlife.

The whole room smells like nothing, really. The enclosed fireplace I insist on keeps out all the woodburning scents, and Ryan’s candles weren’t lit today. I didn’t want them stinking up the place today. If I move, I get a whiff of stale sweat or cat hair, but it’s not too bad. It doesn’t distract me.

Obi’s curled up on my lap, half-asleep. Every so often he decides to adjust his position, clawing slightly at my chinos, but I ignore him. I’ve petted him for at least two hours today, he’s spoiled. Anything more at this point is just indulgence. He’s angling for more head scratches, and Ryan, the fool, gives it to him. The fucking cat will be on us all night, now, looking for attention and scratching at our door.

Ryan leaned over Obi and kissed me, his hand on my shoulder. He smiled at me, and I smile back.

“I love you, Ryan,” I tell him.

 

“Shane,” Ryan held him against the wall, his man with a gun in his abdomen and fear in his eyes, “Malley, was it?”  
“Madej,” Shane coughed out. It’s hard to breathe like this, what with Ryan jamming the barrel of his gun into my solar plexus, grinding it in so the skin catches in the material of my work shirt and skips and overlaps. It hurts, a deep aching sort of pain. Ryan messed up my name. That makes me sad.  
“Whatever. Why are you fucking following me? Where are your other guys?”  
“I promise,” Shane pleaded, and I could almost cry. Shane’s eyes water up a little bit, distraught at the thought that the love of his life wouldn’t trust him. “It’s just me. I just wanted to see you, Ry.”  
“What? Don’t call me that.”  
“I’m not a freak,” I promised him, “I’m not a freak. I just want you, Ryan. I love you. I did all this for you.”

‘All this’ happened to be a collection of heads, some fresh, some partially decomposed and defrosting. All of them displayed proudly in US Postal Service cardboard boxes and surrounded by biodegradable packing material. Some of the heads Ryan recognised as enemies, as people he hated, people the feds came knocking on his door about.

“Who’s the one in the middle,” Ryan asked, jamming his wrist a little harder into Shane’s neck. Shane’s turned on by it. It’s not really a question.  
“Your… barista…” Shane huffed, like it was obvious. The head’s still got the little Starbucks cap on, tilted at an artistically jaunty angle. Shane spent half an hour arranging it, making sure it was just right. Nothing the but the best for Ryan.  
“What the fuck was wrong with my barista?” Ryan was so surprised, he leaned back, removing the pressure from Shane’s throat. Shane keens at the loss.  
“He messed up your order three days ago. He gave you one espresso shot instead of two.”

Ryan dropped Shane, and I dropped to the floor like a sack of bricks. I decided on my knees wasn’t enough, and chose to lay back, prostrate and exposed to him, spread out on the floor like pate on crusty French bread. From this angle he could see how hard I was, how much I needed him. My air. My lifeline. My love. I get a perfect view of up his nostrils, and I think if I concentrate enough, I can see his brain, I can see every synapse firing around as he evaluates the situation.

“I’m not a freak,” I tell him again, “I’m fine. I’m sane. I’ve been watching you, Ryan, and I love you. I’m in love with you.”  
“You broke into my house, and you’re telling me you’re sane, and I’m just meant to believe you? Where’s the fucking set up?” Ryan stepped on Shane’s groin, pressing the wooden heel of his brogue into the side of Shane’s left ball. It hurts so good, and I moaned. I couldn’t help it – the hottest man I’d ever seen in my life stepping on my dick like it was nothing, like I was nothing but a nuisance under his feet. It was the hottest thing I’d ever seen in my life. Ryan looked pleased with my performance, his perfect smile turning up at the corners, creasing the outer edges of his eyes. “You’re a good actor, I’ll give you that.”  
“Not acting,” Shane managed to get out. It was hard to focus with his shoe on my dick.

Ryan unbuckled his belt, unzipped his fly, and took his dick out. It was soft, and Shane’s mouth watered. He wanted that. He just wanted to cram every inch of it into his maw, fill his whole face with Ryan’s essence. It should be his. He wants it so bad.

Ryan moved his foot away, and the lack of pressure should feel like relief. It didn’t.

“Sit up,” Ryan ordered, and Shane was on his knees, “I’m going to fuck your mouth.”  
“Good,” Shane replied. “Good.”

 

Shane’s hands curled around Ryan’s shoulders, looped up under Ryan’s armpits, holding Ryan close to my chest. I could feel his heartbeat, a one-two, the squishy mass pulsating in Ryan’s chest, too far away from my own. Shane rocked them slightly, humming in Ryan’s ear.

Ryan’s cologne was musky and woodsy, something expensive applied hastily. Shane watched him spray it that morning, one and a half spritzes on the inside of his left wrist, rubbed together, and then behind both his ears. Perhaps his father taught him that. Held his then-tiny hand with a delicacy fathers rarely have, told him how to apply perfume in the most masculine of ways. How masculine, Ryan’s father must think, Ryan’s little boytoy draped over Ryan’s back, face pressed against the pulse point behind Ryan’s ear, the same point his father showed to him many moons ago.

Only an inch down, Ryan has a deep hickey blooming red-purple. Shane left it last night, and Ryan left equally deep bruises across Shane’s backside. Shane can’t walk without knowing where Ryan was on his body, each micrometre inspiring a different bud of pain. Ryan called it ‘punishment, Shane. I’m in charge, you’re _my_ plaything’, but Shane knows he wasn’t right.

“I love you,” Shane whispered, watching Ryan pull the trigger of his gun, shooting Shane’s ex-boyfriend in the head mercilessly.  
“I know,” Ryan replied, like it was expected. Shane’s fingers dug deeper into the padding of Ryan’s suit, trying in vain to break skin. He wanted to punish _him_.

Shane’s ex-boyfriend was allegedly abusive. Ryan saw bruises when Shane came back from his apartment, old scars from old arguments, rib-bones like internalised cages. Ryan saw red.

Shane’s ex-boyfriend’s brains were scattered over their kitchen cabinets, a bullet hole through their mug cupboard. His ex-boyfriend’s corpse looked like a marionette with his strings cut, a discarded doll whose owner found no need for him anymore. He was to be put away in a cupboard, never to be thought of again, existing only to collect dust.

“You’re really hot,” Shane told him, giving him a soft kiss behind the ear.  
“You think so?”

From his angle, Shane could see the way the muscles at the perimeter of Ryan’s face stretch into a smirk. Ryan went to set his gun down, and Shane followed. His skin was Ryan’s skin, and so on and so forth.

“Where’s your bedroom, babe?” Ryan asked.  
“Are you scared?” Shane mocked, “fuck me over the kitchen counter. I wanna look at what you’ve done when I come.”  
“Shane,” Ryan said, warning-like. Like he was going to pussy out, and Shane couldn’t have that.

I couldn’t. I darted over to the kitchen table, picking up the FBI jacket I’d left there just in case. Swaddled in it, I turned to him, putting the swagger of a lawman into my posture. The presence of a self-satisfied man, wholly comfortable in his knowledge that God could not touch him, for he has the law behind him and justifying him. Ryan hates it, I know, which is why I did it.

“Shane,” Ryan said, and the gun was still in his hand. He had a smear of blood across his face, where he rubbed his cheek with the back of his hand. “Shane, you better not be having second thoughts _now_. I don’t like being used.”  
“I like the gun being pointed at me,” Shane replied, winking, “it reminds me of when you first met me.”  
“What’s the big idea, _babe._ ”  
“I just want to remind you of us. How much I love you.”  
“You’re fucking insane,” Ryan smiled, his teeth a perfect white, like smuggled ivory on a black velvet tray.  
“Not a freak.”  
“Not a freak,” Ryan repeated, “I know. Lie down on the fucking table if you want me so much.”  
“Make me, sweetheart.”

 

Andrew has a flat gaze, one that goes right over the top of Ryan’s head. They talked like they both aren’t one unexpected movement away from pulling the trigger, like they like each other. Andrew likes Steven to sit next to him, hands right-left on top of each other on the table. Andrew wears three rings: a large, heavy signet ring; a band with three small ruby adornments, and a single ring on his thumb. The thumb ring scrapes against Steven’s wedding band when he breathes.

Shane got to stand behind Ryan, hand resting gently against the seam of Ryan’s shoulder. He looked at the space behind Andrew, at Ryan’s glass of whisky, at the raw skin hiding just underneath Steven’s well-cut sleeve. They liked to stew in silence, watching each other like feral cats marking their territory.

Andrew cleared his throat. It’s like a footstep into a once-forgotten library, suddenly disturbing the thick layer of silence covering every inch, throwing it up and into the air and out of view.

“I see you’ve landed yourself in… _new_ circumstances,” he said, speaking to the space a foot above Ryan’s face.  
From where Shane can see, Ryan’s knuckles tighten at the offence, the bone pressed so hard against the skin they go a yellow-white. “Yes.”  
“I suppose we can keep our original agreement, as long as you don’t overstep your territory. I don’t want you near things that are mine.”  
“I had no intention of disturbing your business,” Ryan drawled, unimpressed by Andrew’s show of strength.

Andrew’s signet ring glinted in the light. Shane got the message.

 

Ryan always sleeps on the left side of the bed. He likes to sleep facing the door, hand underneath a pillow, gun in hand. He’s worried about intruders, he says, but Shane doesn’t think that is all he’s afraid of.

It’s strange, then, to see him spread-eagled in the centre of the bed, wrists cuffed where Shane’s usually are. The black leather cuffs don’t have such a stark contrast on Ryan as they do on Shane. On Shane, they look natural, lived in. On Ryan, they’re exceptional. The bondage is tight, the ropes on his legs taught, spreading them wide.

It was easy to get Ryan like this, a few sips of his bedtime whisky, a few hours, and he was out like a light. The early beams of morning sunshine stream in through the French windows, highlighting the contours of his body, golden-yellow draped over the tops of his thighs and the delicate flesh of his underarms.

Shane clicked his fingers in front of Ryan’s face, testing he wasn’t going to wake so easily, and then he took the long hunting knife he’d bought expressly for Ryan, and ran the point across the Ryan’s clavicles. It hadn’t cut before, hadn’t ever been used. Shane wanted to keep it specially for Ryan: only the best for his love.

 _I love you,_ Shane said, and plunged the knife into the thick meat of Ryan’s right upper-arm.

That woke Ryan up. He screamed, so close to Shane’s ears it made his head ring. He couldn’t have that. I love my sweetheart, but sometimes he doesn’t know what’s best for him.

“Shh, Ry, calm down,” he soothed Ryan, hand holding down Ryan’s shoulder to prevent him from struggling. “Sweetheart, I’m doing this for us.”

“What the fuck! What the –“ Ryan gurgled into silence when Shane stabbed him in the throat, wiggling the knife around to completely destroy his windpipe. Instead of the screaming, Shane got the lovely sound of Ryan choking on his own blood.

Cutting downwards from his throat, Shane cut open Ryan’s chest, peeling back the skin from his ribcage. Ryan’s struggles got weaker and weaker as the life started to leave him, and Shane loved that. I loved to see how he tensed less, stopped trying to move in his bindings. He was letting me into his body, crawl under his skin, to become part of him. I had him.

“I did this for you, Ryan. I told you,” he said, “I told you that I loved you.”

**Author's Note:**

> Talk to me about this fic on tumblr @fratboyryan!


End file.
